ABOUT THE CLIENT
Adient is one of the world’s largest automotive seating suppliers.
Unsatisfied with the level of transparency and performance of their systems integrator, Adient turned to Bayforce for their Workday global rollout.
The Bayforce solution led to a higher level of expertise at a lower cost – and a successful rollout, on time and on budget.
Adient Spins off of JCI, Implements Workday HCM
Johnson Controls International (JCI), is a publicly traded (NYSE: JCI), global-diversified technology and multi-industrial enterprise.
At the end of 2016, JCI completed a separation of its automotive seating business to form Adient, an independent, publicly traded company (NYSE: ADNn with 75,000 employees. Headquartered near Detroit, Adient is one of the world’s largest global automotive seating suppliers, operating in 230 manufacturing & assembly plants in 33 countries.
CLIENT CHALLENGE
Inexperienced Systems Integrator Lacks Client-Focus
During the formal separation process, JCI was changing HR platforms from Oracle’s PeopleSoft to the more user-friendly, Workday. To preserve systems continuity, Adient engaged a large systems integrator (SI) to clone JCl’s IT landscape, ensuring the newly formed corporation would hit the ground running on day one.
Unsatisfied with the Si’s performance, however, Adient replaced the initial SI with a well-known competitor focused on HR implementations to roll out Workday’s suite of Core HCM products.
Even with this change, Adient began to suspect the new SI did not have the company’s best interests in mind. The first indications of this occurred when the SI pulled out of a piece of the project’s statement of work, subsequently leaving Adient in a difficult position and no longer rewarding the SI with implementing the additional modules of Recruiting, Compensation, Talent Management, Time and Absence, and Payroll.
At the same time, Adient was concerned that project teams were over-staffed with junior consultants training on the job and that the company was footing the bill for their training exercise. Lastly, the consultants weren’t as accessible as Adient desired, never coming on site or to the headquarters. In combination, the new SI was proving to be a very expensive choice to retain, and the company sought an effective solution.
BAYFORCE SOLUTION & RESULTS
Adient Selects Bayforce for Subject Matter Expertise
Bayforce consultants were already in place, performing work with other teams at Adient prior to the Workday roll-out needs. When called upon for assistance with the Workday project, Bayforce swiftly provided value, placing key project managers and business analysts on
the functional and business sides of the project to ensure Adient would meet its project timeline on budget.
On the functional side, Bayforce’s customer-facing consultants performed exceptionally well, understanding the product and expertly translating this back to the IT team for development, where Bayforce has Technical consultants. Bayforce consultants constantly made themselves available outside of North American time zones to increase responsiveness. The quick and successful placement of these key consultants led Adient to request additional consultants to augment staff on the Workday project through completion.
Results: Workday Rolls Out Globally, On Time and On Budget
Adient successfully went live globally with Workday Core HCM and additional modules at the end of November 2017 – on time and on budget.
As a result of Bayforce’s quick and successful turnaround with qualified Project Managers, Adient chose not to use an SI for the rest of the project and leveraged a staff augmentation solution, primarily with Bayforce consultants.
Bayforce Consultants are now responsible for implementing recruiting, payroll, compensation, and talent acquisition, and our project managers work alongside Adient directors to provide the following skills: reporting, business process configuration, functional leads, recruiting (functional), compensation (functional), testers/QA analysts, PM’s, technical leads, and integration consultants.
Overall, Bayforce provided approximately 15 consultants on the IT side and 8 on the functional side of the project for Adient, and of the ongoing projects assigned, 100% of Bayforce’s consultants are still in place and succeeding for Adient. This solution has led to a higher level of expertise at a lower cost, and Adient ultimately has more control over their project’s success.